"An ideologist is one who, upon discovering that a rose smellsbetter than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make a bettersoup." H.L. Mencken

SOME DISK MAGAZINES REVIEWED by Richard Karsmakers

As usual, people have deemed it necessary to assail my mailboxwith all but a flurry of mailmen carrying disks with electronicmagazines. In this column I will try to put in some thoughts oneach of them. Not that they were actually that many, but youwon't hear me complaining.

Scriba Communis Responsum Volume 2 Issue 2

Nutty as ever, packed as ever, smooth as ever, totally warped asever, and militantly zealous ST and Falcon-compatible as ever,it's "Scriba Communis Responsum" Volume 2 Issue 2 that saw thelight of day somewhere in November 1993. I know for sure that there will never quite be a magazine likeit, featuring their highly illustrious load of verbal diarrhoeaintermingled with huge amounts of intellectual babblings and alot of prose as well. Apart from that, the user interface is alsofaster than anything you're likely to find and it's the epitomeof userfriendliness. And the stupid thing is that I don't even get paid for writingthis. Probably because, by and large, it's true. I will not bother you with a description of the articles andfeatures on its jam-packed disk. I think it will just be betterif I leave it to your imagination. And if you haven't got a lotof imagination you can always try sending disk, SAE and IRCs tothe address below.

Unfortunately, yes let's get it over with right away, this willbe the last ever issue of the "ST Enthusiasts Newsletter", ajoint effort of British Dave Mooney and John Weller. I alwaysreckoned "STEN" was the best disk magazine around even thoughtheir user interface couldn't quite match that of, say, "Maggie"and "DBA Magazine". Their departure will be felt, I am sure,especially in the realms of the somewhat more serious ST users."STEN" persistently featured high quality articles and always didvery well in the glossies' disk magazines polls (despite the factthat "STEN" always criticised them, and rightly so!). Only in alate last year's issue of "ST Review" they got to second place insuch a poll, closely followed by "DBA Magazine" (and the mostexcellently reincarnated "Maggie", most remarkably, tagging alongon an inexplicable tenth spot). Anyway, Dave and John wanted to wrap up a lot of loose ends. Inthe process they have created another excellent issue, so insteadof fading away they appear to have opted for the "gone with abang" method. "STEN" issue 15 features an interview with (who else?) God.Maybe I've always underestimated the humorous side of "STEN" whatwith my constantly emphasizing the fact that they were prettyserious actually. Plenty of stuff to laugh at in this issue, aswell as the usual collection of reviews and tidbits. Concluding, this issue should only be steered clear of if youthink one should not be joking about God (and, indeed, whyshouldn't one?).

The address to send a disk, SAE and reply postage to if you'reinterested in this issue is:

John Weller 51 St. Luke's Road Bournemouth Dorset BH3 7LR England

From what I've gathered, Dave will be spending more time on hisacademic career (involving PCs, of all things) and family, and hehas in the mean time found it necessary to sell his ST. John isthinking of setting up some sort of, quote, "creative 'zine" onthe ST, whereas he will also write the odd bit for ST NEWS I amglad to say.

Falcon Magazine

Summer of last year saw the birth and, unfortunately, quickdeath of a Falcon-only disk magazine. I doubt that many of youwill have heard of it, and I doubt even more than any of you willmourn because of its demise, for "Falcom Magazine" was wholly inDutch and not actually very excellent. I think the main reason for its death lay in its concept. It wasa weekly disk magazine only for Falcon users, and it was Dutch. Ihave done ST NEWS for quite a few years now and I would worshipThe One who could possibly put together a decent disk magazineevery week for more than a month. "Falcon Magazine" was noexception to the rule that it's actually pretty difficult to geta number of articles together. Hence its premature passing away. But let us ruminate a bit about its history, and the threeissues that encompassed it. The first issue was released on June 28th 1993, and was writtenmainly by its editor, Jos van Roosmalen. Like the second issue,it was just a text file on disk, between 40 and 50 Kb in size,with added source material, tools and pictures on the disk. Thearticles were of moderate interest, in this case covering "GfABasic" popup menu programming, a sampler program including "PureC" source code and various minor bits. Apart from 50 Kb of textit contained about 100 Kb worth of tools and source material,with an added 480 Kb of pictures. Not something to get overlyexcited about, but it was a reasonable beginning. July 5th saw the release of issue 2. This time it featured 43 Kbof text, 160 Kb of tools and sources and a whopping 614 Kb worthof pictures. Programs on the disk included a "Direct to DiskRecording" program ("WinRec" 1.3) and a program to reset theFalcon's NonVolatile RAM. Programming tricks were offering withregard to programming submenus in various programming language. The third issue, which would also turn out to be the last one,showed both evolution and decline. Evolution showed itselfthrough the fact that it now had its own GEM text display shell,boasting such features as the ability to use text styles anddisplay pictures, even though it was quite buggy and slow. Onthe decline side of things there were only a handful of articles,amounting to about 22 meagrely interesting Kbs and one 153 Kbpicture. Some 200 Kb worth of tools and source material could befound on the disk. I seem to recall some "FPU" stuff beingmentioned here. It wasn't a very interesting issue. And now, as was told already, "Falcon Magazine" is no more.Maybe it will one day come back, but hopefully it will then bewritten in English, appear on monthly basis (or even lessfrequently, like quarterly), and be more interesting (not tomention a really decent shell).

Maggie Issue 13

"Maggie" is alive again, and has been for a few issues already.To make us all doubly aware of this, January saw the release ofthe 13th issue in total, otherwise known as "Maggie 13" (ahem).Whereas "Maggie" was one of my favourite disk magazines before,with the demise of "STEN" and the perpetual lack of anyonesending me "DBA" I guess it'll have to do with "most favourite"status now. I really dig the fresh humour and large amount ofarticles covering diverse fields that may nor may not beconnected with the computer scene in general. Issue 13 contains, among other things: Game (p)reviews(among others "Frontier - Elite 2", "Goal", "Ishar 2", "No SecondPrize" and even a PC CD ROM game (?!) called "Rebel Assault"),demo reviews (among others "Froggies over the Fence" and varioussmaller Falcon demos), interviews and various trivial things suchas a report on the Douglas Adams related "VoCon" happenings,Maggie Thatcher (and her years), "16 Bit Computer Show" reviewsand an incredibly witty article of computer salesman anecdotes.One of the interviews is with the Luigi Mario Brother, acomputer character features years ago in Nintendo games but neverspotted afterwards (and if you think the interview is witty, waituntil you read the disclaimer!). "Maggie" works both on ST and Falcon, although there's no musicin Falcon mode and you have to boot in an ST-compatibleresolution (not on a VGA standard resolution anyways). The userinterface is still as perfect as ever, and on the disk you willfind separate "ST" and "Falcon" folders containing variousgoodies ranging from demos to the latest version of "Backward"for example. I think there is no reason for "Maggie" ever to ever on number10 in any glossy magazine's Disk Magazine Top 10. Rather, I thinkit should be on #1.

Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes,
bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and
tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact
and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any
kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are
not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll
texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.